About the role
Why Sony Interactive Entertainment?
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is the company behind the PlayStation brand. As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation, the organization delivers cutting-edge hardware and network services to more than 100 million people. SIE creates and nurtures the experiences under the PlayStation brand, focusing on entertainment excellence and creativity.
Why PlayStation?
PlayStation is a global leader in entertainment producing the PlayStation family of products and services, including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, and acclaimed software titles from PlayStation Studios. The company strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity.
Role Overview
The Lead Character Tools Engineer joins the PlayStation Central Technology team focusing on character technology, including creation, rigging, and animation. The role involves developing and distributing tools, optimizing character production, and integrating emergent technology into future game-making processes. The candidate will prototype, deploy, and maintain technical tools and practices, leveraging both traditional game development workflows and new opportunities in AI/ML. The team includes artists, engineers, and technical artists partnering with studio stakeholders and research engineers to provide cohesion and standardization across PlayStation Studios activities.
Responsibilities
- Collaborate with internal team members and studio stakeholders to prototype and harden creation tools considering contemporary development workflows, data management, art creation, animation, and game engine integration.
- Setting up and maintaining project-specific environments and automation opportunities.
- Learning and supporting varying client working environments, assets, and tools.
- Writing, maintaining, and customizing internal tools and workflows.
- Building and maintaining technical documentation.
- Willingness to attend and participate in PlayStation internal demonstrations and conferences; travel required.
- Ability to work in a collaborative team environment as well as self-driven experimentation and research.
Core Experience
- Experience as a technical artist or engineer developing and deploying tools to support character creation, rigging, simulation, or animation pipelines in a run-time environment.
- 10+ years in a game development studio or previous experience creating artist-facing tools on a technical art or engineering team in a production environment.
- BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Graphic Art, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Extensive experience working with game editors and excellent working knowledge of technical specifications of workflow from DCC to complex real-time environments.
- Capable of writing and debugging C++.
- Excellent knowledge of Maya with general knowledge of Maya rigging.
- Developing or maintaining project pipeline tools and system environments.
- Excellent troubleshooting skills and the ability to creatively solve problems.
- Experience leveraging Agentic AI models.
- Strong understanding of deformation and mesh processing.
- Familiarity with industry trends in character rigging, gameplay animation, cinematic animation, deformation, and simulation usage in character animation pipelines.
- Decent sense of humor.
Extended Experience
- Strong Python programming skills and experience with PyQt/Pyside.
- Motionbuilder, Maya, Houdini experience.
- Experience with HLSL, MaterialX.
- Experience with other programming languages, especially C++.
- Experience with Perforce, Git, Confluence.
- Exposure to photogrammetry, motion capture/performance capture.
Compensation and Benefits
- Base Pay Range: $143,700 - $215,500 USD.
- Individual base pay is determined by job-related factors including knowledge, skills, experience, and location.
- Eligibility for SIE’s top-tier benefits package including medical, dental, vision, matching 401(k), paid time off, and wellness programs.
- Coveted employee discounts for Sony products.
- Potential eligibility for a bonus package.
Additional Information
- Location: United States, Remote.
- Policies: Hybrid working policy.
- Background Checks: Conducted at the offer stage for all new employees, including criminal background checks where applicable.
- Equal Opportunity: Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, race, religion, marital status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, parental status, or trade union membership. The company is a Fair Chance employer and qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment.